Wednesday, May 15, 2013

I wonder how much this "report" cost?

(I think I can safely conclude that the average person figured this out a while back... Oh, I don't know, maybe the rich Saudis of 9/11 clued us in... I wonder if this report may be part of the de facto understanding Justin Trudeau so desperately craves...I would sooner want a deeper understanding as to why recruitment levels are so high within our prison systems and amongst the loners in our academic institutions...)

Like many terrorists, poverty or psychopathology does not seem to have played a role in the radicalization of Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Federal report finds no link between poverty and radicalization of terrorists

OTTAWA — There is scant evidence poverty, mental illness and personality disorders are root causes of terrorism, says a newly-released defence agency study.
The analysis for Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) was made public Sunday, almost two years after its completion and just weeks after Justin Trudeau tripped over a political landmine on the same topic.

Hours after April’s Boston Marathon bombings, the new federal Liberal leader said the root causes of terrorism need examining and that perpetrators are motivated by feelings of being “excluded” from society. The comment was interpreted by many as inappropriate and suggested terrorists are somehow victims, too.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper took a jab at Trudeau a day later, saying the focus should be on rooting out the perpetrators of the attack.

A week later, after the RCMP announced the arrests of two men for allegedly plotting to bomb a VIA Rail train, Harper said it was not the time to “commit sociology” when asked when it’s appropriate to talk about the root causes of terrorism.

But the government, of course, has been doing just that. The study report even notes, “because so little is known about radicalization and de-radicalization, more research is both urgent and necessary.”

The work involved a two-year analysis of existing literature on terrorism and radicalization and explored two elements of routes to terrorism: the psychological processes and the impact of economic factors.

Cultural alienation and disenfranchisement as possible root causes are mentioned only once in the 33,000-word document.

And contrary to the populist view that economic hardship leads to radicalization, the report says researchers in the area seem unequivocal in their conclusion that there is no link between economic factors and radicalization, and that many radicals are, in fact, economically advantaged compared to others in their communities.

“The evolution of a terrorist is more complex than a simple uni-dimensional cause-and-effect relationship.”

The report highlights a 2001 article about the 9/11 hijackers by New York Times writer Jodi Wilgoren (now Jodi Rudoren) to underscore that point:

“They were adults with education and skill ... spent years studying and training in the United States, collecting valuable commercial skills and facing many opportunities to change their minds ... they were not reckless young men facing dire economic conditions and dim prospects but men as old as 41 enjoying middle-class lives.”

The alternative explanation — that terrorists hate us so much because they have grown up in poverty and lacked the good education and opportunities that we have enjoyed — “finds a willing audience in the first-world, the industrialized West and its allies, but is this merely a convenient explanation that appeals to our sense of superiority due to our relative affluence and sophistication, as well as invalidating the grievances of the terrorists and rendering them little more than criminals.

“Although the simple logic of ‘poverty leads to terrorism’ is still attractive during discussions addressing terrorism, policy-shapers and decision-makers are increasingly shying away from making such simplistic claims about the relationship between poverty and the likelihood of an individual engaging in anti-social or violent activity to draw attention to their ideological agenda.”

The notion that the terrorist is irrational and crazy is wrong, too...

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

Discussing the issues of Islam, Sharia, Islamic atrocities and other things that suit issues of the day. I also do a twice-weekly program on Blog Talk Radio:
RED FOX BLOGGER Internet Radio (Active)
RED FOX Blog Talk Radio Feed (Archival)
See links in the Blogroll.